Antiquity 81 (313)

The paper gives an interim report on a campaign of research in progress concerning Stonehenge is focused not just on the monument, but on its landscape, its hinterland and the monuments within it. Revisiting historical records of earlier investigations, the authors demonstrate that the ambiguous dating of the trilithons was based on samples taken from the wrong context, and can now be settled at 2600--2400 cal BC. This means that the trilithons are contemporary with Durrington Walls, near neighbour and Britain's largest henge monument. These two monuments, different but complementary, now predate the earliest Beaker burials in Britain including the famous Amesbury Archer and Boscombe Bowmen, but may already have been receiving Beaker pottery. All this contributes to a new interpretation of massive monumental development during this period.

By extracting lipids from potsherds and determining the 13C of the most abundant fatty acids, degraded fats from ruminant animals, such as cattle, and non-ruminant animals, such as pigs, can be distinguished. The authors use this phenomenon to investigate Late Neolithic pig exploitation and find that the pig `signature' was more frequently found among residues from Grooved Ware than other prehistoric pottery types.